Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Inkjet Printer (2171B002) | 
| Brand: Canon
List Price: $129.99
Buy New: $99.99
You Save: $30.00 (23%)
New (61) Used (1) from $126.92
Rating:  97 reviews
Color: Gray/Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP
Modem: None
Shipping Weight (lbs): 22
Dimensions (in): 17.5 x 11.9 x 6.3
nv:Print Method: Inkjet
Resolution: Up to 9600 x 2400 dpi
Print Speed: Up to 31 PPM (Black)
Print Speed: Up to 24 PPM (Color)
Special Features: Border Free Printing
Dimensions: 17.5"W x 11.9"D x 6.3"H
Connectivity: USB
Connectivity: PictBridge
Standard Paper Input: 100 Sheet Input Tray
Duplex Printing: Yes
Paper Sizes Supported: Letter
Paper Sizes Supported: Legal
Paper Sizes Supported: Envelopes
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: 2171B002
Model: 2171B002
UPC: 013803081084
EAN: 0013803081084
ASIN: B000V2MK8C
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new sealed in a box. UPC removed for rebates. Buy with confidence. Everything included.
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| Features:
| • | Efficient printer with 5-color ink system | | • | 4,608-nozzle print head delivers vivid, lifelike color and laser-quality text | | • | Up to 9600 x 2400 color dpi resolution | | • | Prints borderless 4 x 6 inch photo in about 21 seconds | | • | Dimensions: 11.9 x 6.3 x 17.5 in. (WxHxD); weighs 15.2 pounds; 1-year limited warranty |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Product Description
The Canon Pixma iP4500 is a stylish unit that boasts both a five-color ink system and a 4,608-nozzle print head to deliver wonderfully lifelike color, along with bold, laser-quality text. How does it work? The print head ejects precision droplets as small as one picoliter, resulting in a breathtaking 9600 x 2400 color dot-per-inch (dpi) resolution as well as a truly exceptional level of detail. Remarkably efficient, the iP4500 also will print a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in only about 21 seconds. And you can store both photo paper and plain paper in the two paper trays at the same time, so you're always ready to print exactly what you need. The user-friendly iP4500 provides lots of options, so you can indulge your creativity. With this system, you get four dye-based inks plus a pigment-based black ink, the option of printing two-sided documents to save paper, and the ability to print right from your infrared-enabled mobile camera phone. Simply capture an image with a PictBridge-ready digital camera or DV camcorder, then connect and print--it's that simple. And to make sure your favorite shots look their best, the built-in automatic image-fixing feature via Easy PhotoPrint EX also helps ensure that each image is as clear and vibrant as possible. What's in the Box
Pixma iP4500 photo printer, document kit (cross sell sheet, easy setup instructions, quick start guide), setup software and user's guide on CD-ROM, PGI-5 pigment black ink tank, CLI-8 (black/cyan/magenta/yellow) ink tank, sample media (five 8.5-by-11-inch sheets and four print alignment sheets), power cord, and print head.
Product Description
This PIXMA iP4500 is a stylish machine that features a 5-color ink system and a 4,608-nozzle print head that ejects precision droplets as small as 1-picoliter. Amazing 9600 x 2400 color dpi resolution and life-life color values print a superb borderless 4" x 6" photo in only about 21 seconds along with bold, laser-quality text. The two paper trays let you store both photo paper and plain paper, so you're always print-ready. Up to 24 ppm Color Print Speed as fast as 2.5 seconds per page Print Resolution - Up to 600 x 600 dpi Black, 9600 x 2400 dpi Color Paper Sizes - Credit Card (2.13x3.39), 4x6, 4x8, 5x7, 8x10, Letter, Legal, U.S. #10 Envelopes, and Photo Stickers Noise Level - Approx. 34.5 dB in the best quality mode OS Compatibility - Windows Vista, Windows XP/2000 and Mac OS X v.10.2.8 to 10.4.x6 Dimensions - Length 17.5 x Width 11.9 x Height 6.3 Weight - 15.2 pounds
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| Customer Reviews: Read 92 more reviews...
 Outstanding printer, great value November 1, 2007
Matthew K. Morgan (Ruther Glen, VA USA)
106 out of 109 found this review helpful
I had a Canon BubbleJet BJC-4200 long ago, and after that printer I was very hesitant to even consider another Canon printer. When my most recent printer died, an HP DeskJet 970cse, I needed to find a good printer that could print duplex and produce quality output. After reading many, many reviews I decided to give Canon another chance. I am very glad that I did so.
The Pixma iP4500 arrived in a huge box, and as it turns out it needed the space. This is a larger printer than I expected, and as a result I had to rearrange my desk to find room for it. That's a small oversight on my part. The printer itself is an unassuming-looking box of a machine, though it resembles more of a printer when the paper trays are populated.
Setup was easy and straightforward, though I do recommend using the "getting started" insert before setting everything up. Though setting everything up is relatively self-explanatory, it is helpful to see the illustration of what to do in order before making the leap. Overall, setup took maybe 20-30 minutes once the parts were all out of the box and everything was set up.
Once configured, installing the drivers is simple. Drop in the CD, follow the prompts, and turn on the printer at the right time. No fuss.
Once set up and powered on, the printer is ready to go to work. I print a majority of my things in duplex mode so I tweaked the driver configuration to make it the default, after which the setting is more or less invisible. Everything in the driver configuration is very easy to find, straightforward, and simple.
There are two ways to feed paper into the iP4500. There is a top-loader which is the default paper source and there is a front-loading paper tray ("cassette" according to Canon's documentation). Heavier papers such as card stock should be loaded from the top-loader.
So, how does this printer perform? I'll break it down into two parts, speed and quality.
Speed - this is a relatively fast printer! Feeding it a print job that conists of a two-sided black and white print this printer can churn out the pages, including the dry time for the front page, in about 20 seconds. Granted, this is my experience and your mileage may vary but it's a good starting point from which to base your evaluation of the speed. My previous printer would take at least a minute to print the very same documents, and it still couldn't keep up when in draft mode. For photo printing it churns out a full-page 8.5"x11" borderless photo in roughly 45 seconds.
Quality - what good is speed without quality? This printer backs it up. The text and basic image quality is acceptable, though it could be a touch better. This is not noticeable in day-to-day print jobs. On photo printing, though, this printer is an absolute showstopper. The photos it prints, on photo paper, are better than most magazine prints and could easily be used for photo studio gallery shots.
It would be nice if the printer actually had a USB cable in the box, but this is a small thing.
Overall, this is a high-quiality, high-performance printer that is sure to please even the staunchest of critics. It is fast, creates beautiful output, and is very easy to set up.
 Claus Wolf's MyMac.com Review February 16, 2008
Tim E Robertson (Battle Creek, Mi United States)
45 out of 45 found this review helpful
Canon labels the Pixma iP4500 as a premium photo and document printer, and when I bought it in early January my main purchasing criteria was high quality photo prints and the ability to print on DVDs and CDs.
The printer itself looks tremendously stylish. Next to my iMac it looks as if the designers of the printer had been sitting in front of an iMac when coming up with the design. The printer looks great, which kind of is important as it is located together with my iMac in the living room. The only downside to the good looks is that the shiny black plastic attracts dust like a magnet.
One of the many up-sites to this printer is that it has two paper trays. The bottom tray sticks out about 10 cm (4 inch), when you expand it to hold A4 paper, but that is a small price to pay, considering that this way you do not have to store paper in the top tray. The top tray easily adjusts to hold all sorts of paper sizes from 4x6 photo paper to A4 or letter size. A button on the main unit lets you select the tray you wish to use and I found this a real benefit.
I like the printer driver, though I haven't a lot to compare it to. I find it easy to use and flexible enough to fulfill my beginner's needs.
Photo Quality
Comparing photo quality is really hard, as I do not have a bunch of similar printers here, for which I could compare print outs side by side. So I will just simply say that the print outs I have made on glossy photo paper look stunning. So stunning indeed that we have a few of them hanging in our living room already.
The printer uses 5 separate ink tanks, which I am being told is good for photo quality, and i am happy to believe that. What it really means to me is that if one color is out, I can just replace that one color rather than an entire combined cartridge. In my opinion the environmental and bank account friendly option.
Placing a photo print out next to pictures I had "developed" by a popular German photo printing service I must say I personally would consider the Pixma iP4500 print outs almost a bit nicer, at least the smaller sizes, though it greatly depends on the photo paper you use.
The first photo paper I tried obviously wasn't of the best quality, I have to admit, and thus you end up seeing some tracks from where the printer transported the paper. That is rather unfortunate as it takes away from the otherwise superb impression the pure print-quality gives me.
Of course I tried better quality photo paper as well, and those tracks weren't there. So you will definitely want to invest in good photo paper to get the best prints, but I would assume you knew that already. I also find that investing in photo paper with a higher weight per square meter makes the prints feel more like "real photos", but again I would think that you all knew that already.
When printing a normal photo at A4 (about letter size) I notice a minute amount of striping in one area, but I need to get within a few inches of the A4 print in order to see the striping and it is only noticeable in an area of grey clouds. Looking at the image from a normal distance, I cannot see much of a difference. I printed that image last night and the first thing I am going to do is buy an A4 frame, that photo is going to hang in my office.
Black & White
We used the printer to print the inlays and envelopes for our wedding invitations, while black and white only, the speed with which these print outs were completed was purely amazing and the quality was perfect for my impression. Our friends and family were impressed to have professionally printed, yet personalized invitation cards.
In my opinion the result was extremely good and I would be hard pressed to find any fault with the output. Comparing it to my three year old laser printer, I would say that the quality was better and the print outs happened much quicker.
Speed
From a pure specification point of view the printer can deliver a 10x15 borderless photo in 9600x2400 dpi in about 21 seconds. Documents can be printed with a speed of up to 31 pages per minute (b/w) and 24 pages per minute (color).
Printer speeds are hard to really achieve, as they are measured under very specific conditions that we endusers normally don't see. I would think they are more a guide value than anything else and my impression of this printer is that it is quick, very quick.
Did I sit next to my printer and have it print a 30 page document to measure its speed? No I didn't. Did I stop the speed of printing a 4x6 borderless photo? Yes, I did, it took about 35 seconds, which is considerably slower, but when do you start to measure? When you push the print button, or when the printer makes its first noise of transporting the paper? I did measure from pressing the print button to finished photo and I don't think that speed is anything to complain about.
PictBridge
A nice feature is the ability to print directly from my digital camera. I have a Canon A700 which is PictBridge compatible and I plugged it into the printer just to see whether that would work. I was pleased to say the least - the print outs just worked and while I don't think I would trust my Mom to print a high quality photo from within iPhoto, I think that she'd have no issue getting it done this way.
This isn't going to be a feature, I am going to use every day, not even every week or month, but I definitely can see its usefulness.
Printing on CDs & DVDs
One of my requirements for buying this printer was that it should print on CDs and it does. You get a little plastic tray, in which you place the CD/DVD and you fire up the CD Label Print Application to design the label you would like to print.
While the print outs are of decent to good quality, I have a bunch of gripes about this particular feature.
The biggest complaint I have is the software not allowing you to adjust the inner circle to be smaller. The DVDs I bought have a fairly large printable area (see photo), but the software cannot adjust to this larger printable area and thus leaves you with a large white inner circle. I already adjusted the circle as much as was possible to reduce the remaining white area, but it is still rather disappointing to get your DVDs, see that they really look good, but still have that white circle in the middle. There is also a bit of white space at the outer edge, which is less than a millimeter and doesn't bother me too much.
What you see here is that it tells you that the inner circle cannot be smaller than 17mm, but I can only get it to be 33mm. So text and reality just do not match up resulting in the following print out:
The software unfortunately is also not quite intuitive, no tool tips for icons for a starter. My first attempts at printing a DVD saw me resize an image to cover the entire disk, but when I printed this image to disc, the software seemed to have magically reduced the image and printed it much smaller than what it was showing me and thus left a very ugly white space on the disc. So while the software is pretending to be WYSIWYG, it really is more like what you see is what you might get (WYSIWYMG).
If you set a background image that problem isn't there and t works quite well, you get additional design elements like text, rectangle, circles and the lot - but all in all the CD Label Print software leaves me wholly unimpressed as "old fashioned" looking, difficult to use, not quite ready for more complex label designs and most importantly not quite flexible enough, where it does count.
All in all
I think it is tremendously difficult to evaluate a product you have purchased yourself. After all, if you bought it you want to make yourself believe that you made the right decision, objectivity can be hard to come by. I have tried hard to be as objective as possible, but I might be a bit harsh in my verdict.
All in all I am very happy with the printer. The print outs that I have shown to friends and family have impressed, I personally like both the photo and standard print quality. I am sure there is better, but I know there is worse.
There is that issue with the CD Label Software not being flexible enough and this I find annoying as it was one of the main reasons for purchasing this printer.
On the whole I am really happy with the printer and would recommend it to others. Is there room for improvement, yes there is a little, and I hope that Canon will address it as much as is possible with software updates. From a reviewer rating point of view - this is a very decent product, but also look at the competition.
If you were to buy this printer, I am sure you wouldn't regret it - thus I am happy to award:
MyMac.com Rating: 4 out of 5 [...]
 Never a more frustrating printer experience February 28, 2008
luku
39 out of 49 found this review helpful
I fight with this printer all the time just trying to get it to recognize printer cartridges. Canon decided to try to thwart 3rd party cartridge use by wasting all of our time and money adding security features on the ink carts themselves and in the printer software. This gives me headaches weekly even if I am using Canon's own cartridges. Sometimes it just doesn't want to recognize them and the only fix seems to be to "reset" by completely unplugging the printer and waiting TEN MINUTES. Very convenient, Canon.
Also, the printer's ink-level feature seems to have no notion of how much ink is actually in the cartridges. I wasted at least 3 perfectly good and very expensive cartridges until I figured out this must be based on some average use figure Canon invented that doesn't seem to favor your wallet. When I finally do get it to print the quality is fine but not worth all the frustration.
Canon seems to have decided to make printers in their best interest and not the consumer. This is the last Canon printer I will ever buy. What an anti-consumer nightmare. Shame on you, Canon.
 Watch out for the bad chip in ink tank. January 3, 2008
H. Wang (San Jose, CA)
28 out of 41 found this review helpful
My review is for IP4300. But the problem could be applied to IP4500 since IP4200, IP4300 and IP4500 all use the same ink cartridge.
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History: I am very happy with my previous Canon S750 inkjet printer. Specifically, Canon inkjet has been one of the most easy-to-refill printer. The inkhead is wearing out under 3 years heavy use. So, I bought the IP4300 to replace the S750. Starting from IP4200, Canon added chip to each ink tank to prevent the printer from using any user-refilled ink tank. There are work-around for people to still use refilled ink tank with IP4200/IP4300 (not sure about IP4500).
Problem: For my brand new IP4300, after 1 month of use, the printer started to complain that cyan ink tank (not refilled, the original one that came with the printer) was not recognized. So, I had to open the lid, take out the cyan ink tank and put it back to the tank slot again. The printer would then recognize the cyan ink tank. After 1 more week use, the printer just could not recognize the cyan ink tank anymore. Took the cyan ink tank out and put it back would not work.
Investigation: I searched the Canon web site, but could not find any useful infor to solve this problem. I then searched the web and realized quite some people had the same problem with IP4200 or M500. Based on other people's feedbacks, it seems the chip on the cyan ink tank is defact. So, I call the Canon support. The tech support "seems to familiar with" this kind of problem. He quickly proposes that the cyan ink tank may be bad. So he send me a new cyan ink tank with fedex 2-day shipping. I put the new cyan ink tank in and the printer works fine now.
Asssessment:
Pro: I am happy with IP4300's performance, it prints fast, it does duplex printing automatically, it gives out great photo print, it has two seperate paper trays to ease the loading of plain paper and photo paper, it has 5 different ink tanks that can be easily re-filled and there are quite some vendors to supply IP4200/IP4300/IP4500 inks for refilling.
Con: It's too bad that the printer just stops if not all 5 ink tanks are installed.
I still don't know how often the chip in the ink tank will go bad (reliability issue?).
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The is an incremental update after owning IP4300 for 3 months (IP4300 and IP4500 are similar). Canon adds chip to each ink cartridge to scare people away from refilling the cartridge. However, it's fairly easy to work-around that chip. I have successfully refilled the ink cartridges and I am able to disable the printer from complaining about the refilled cartridges . The biggest surprise: The 3rd party ink produces beautiful photo prints also (really can not tell it's not from Cannon's own ink). Well, this credit should go to the ink provider, not to Cannon though.
Given that I am able to control my ink cost by refilling ink for my IP4300, I definitely recommend this powerful IP4300/IP4500 printers to friends.
An excellent printer December 3, 2007
A.N. Other (San Francisco, CA USA)
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
A previous reviewer has covered most of my impressions about this printer, so I will only highlight the main ones. Overall, this is an excellent printer. It is a little large, when all the trays are fully extended (h=13.5", depth = 21', width 17.5"), which could be a problem for users with limited space. However, one does not need to use both trays (at least not at all times), so it is possible to reconfigure it so that it can fit better into limited space. Having two trays is handy, since it makes it easier to switch between paper of difference sizes or qualities.
Setting up the printer is fairly straightforward, though somewhat time-consuming, in part because it spends about 12 minutes calibrating itself as part of the setup. The instructions are ok, but the accompanying informational book is only fair. Some aspects of the printer use are not addressed, so one has to make educated guesses to have the printer do certain things. Once operational, the printer is fast, capable of two-sided output, and produces high quality printing. Text on plain paper is very good, though on close inspection one can see a little bleeding of the ink. It's about as good as any nonlaser text I've seen, be it HP, Canon, or Epson. Photographs are spectacular, with brilliant colors, and very high resolution. Overall, this is an excellent choice if you are looking for a good general purpose printer, capable of producing fine text and photographs at high speed.
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